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A few questions from a nervous FTM

My daughter is 3 weeks old today and I'm not sure about a few things. At her two week pediatrician visit, she had gained 13 ounces from the week before, and she produces plenty of wet and poopy diapers.

1. She latches great during the night or when she's really sleepy, and will nurse well for about 10-15 minutes on one side. But during the day or when she gets fussy, she never seems to latch well -- she clicks during her sucks and rarely goes longer than 6-7 minutes. Often, she'll start getting really upset and claws at my breast. But when I take her off, she has milk in her mouth and my breast drips heavily until I stop it. I'll burp her, and put her back on, and we just keep cycling through that. Any thoughts?

2. When I do get a good latch, I hang onto it for dear life because she won't usually start up again if I break it. Sometimes she'll lose it towards the end, and I can feel it starting to bruise me a bit, and I'll often have white nipples afterward. What can I do? Should I take her off even though I know I can't get her started again?

3. For the last two weeks we noticed that she'd be really fussy in the evenings, from around 7:30 - 10:30pm, nursing lots, but clawing me and acting very unhappy while nursing and then crying and unhappy the rest of the time. From what I've read, this seems like normal "fussy evening/cluster feeding" stuff. But for the last couple days, she's had other periods during the day when she exhibits similar behavior. These periods never last longer than an hour, but it's disturbing. She's rarely awake very long without getting upset. We just started using a pacifier last night, which worked like a charm (and made me upset at how a piece of plastic can console her better than I can). Should I be worried about the frequent nature of these fussy periods?

Re: A few questions from a nervous FTM

Hmmm...how are you holding her when she's nursing? You may have OALD and that's what she's reacting to. I know with my son, I have to hold him more at an angle (not sitting, but not fully reclined) on my right side because I have OALD (over-active let down) on my right side. If she's constantly fussy like that, she may be swallowing a lot of air which makes her gassy, etc.

Do some bicycling with her legs or rub her belly in the "Sun and Moon" style, make sure she doesn't have gas she is not able to pass by herself. Make sure you burp her really well. And, try different positions to see which ones she does better with. If those things don't help, you may want to express some milk (either manually or with a pump) and see if releasing some of the pressure of the milk helps her.

It really, really sounds like she's really gassy. She may like the pacifier because it doesn't have OALD. If you can, get her off the pacifier and back on the breast. HTH...keep us updated!!

Re: A few questions from a nervous FTM

I'm a first time mother as well, DS is 6 wks old. I don't have a problem with latch or OALD. He has always nursed 10 minutes at a time or less. So far he's gained a total of 4 lbs from birth weight. 3 wks seems to be the period that my DS had evening fussiness/cluster feeding, which then intensified into colic. The fussiness would suddenly start around somewhere between 6PM-8PM and last until midnight. I would say that evening fussiness/cluster feeding and colic are the same phenomenon, where fussiness is the milder form and colic is the more severe form. How I coped with the fussiness phase was to keep DS latched as long as I could tolerate. I also pumped BM in the morning and let DH feed LO during the evening after I became sore from having LO latched on so long. This bought me some time as well as giving DS a bath, which broke his spell of crying for a short period. Sounds like your DD is thriving and that is really the end goal. Good luck.